The microphone and the room
How a microphone works, and how to use one
A microphone works by turning moving air into a small electrical current, which is the entire technology standing between a poem and the back row.
The microphone on a spoken word poetry stage is almost always a handheld dynamic model: the voice pushes a thin diaphragm, the diaphragm moves a coil of wire suspended in a magnetic field, and that movement induces a current the mixing desk raises until the loudspeakers can use it.
What is happening inside the microphone
Inside the microphone there are only two common designs, and knowing which one is in your hand explains most of its behaviour. A dynamic microphone generates its own tiny current by induction and needs nothing but a cable, which is why it survives being dropped, gripped and rained on at outdoor events. A condenser microphone works instead as a capacitor, with the diaphragm as one charged plate, and it needs power supplied down the cable, usually 48 volts, known as phantom power. Condensers hear more detail and much more of the room, which is a gift in a recording studio and a liability in a school hall.
| Type | How it works | Where poetry meets it | What it needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Handheld dynamic | Diaphragm moves a coil in a magnet and induces a current | Open mics, slams, school halls, almost every stage | A cable, and nothing else |
| Condenser on a stand | Diaphragm acts as one plate of a charged capacitor | Recording a poem properly, some theatre stages | 48 volts of phantom power, and a quiet room |
| Clip on lavalier | A very small condenser worn on the chest | Talks and filmed pieces where hands are needed | A transmitter pack, batteries, and careful placement |
| Phone or laptop | A tiny condenser aimed at everything at once | Rehearsal recordings and first drafts | A quiet room and a distance of about 20 cm |
Most stage microphones are also directional, in a pattern called cardioid: heart shaped, most sensitive straight ahead, deaf behind. That single fact explains the placement techniques below, and it is why cupping a hand around the grille is the worst habit in performance poetry. Cupping destroys the pattern, makes the microphone equally sensitive in every direction, and invites the feedback that a cardioid design exists to prevent.
Distance and angle, which is the whole technique
Distance and angle are the whole technique, and the numbers are small enough to remember under pressure: hold the grille about one fist away, 8 to 10 cm or 3 to 4 inches, and keep it below the mouth and angled up at roughly 45 degrees rather than pointing straight in.
Getting closer than a fist triggers the proximity effect, a rise in the low frequencies that every directional microphone produces at short range. It sounds warm on a single word and turns a whole poem into mud. Backing off much further makes the sound person raise the gain, which raises the room and the feedback risk with it. The one habit worth drilling is keeping the gap constant: young performers tend to lean in on quiet lines and pull away on loud ones, which is exactly backwards and makes the poem arrive in waves.
The plosive, and why p pops
A plosive is a consonant made by blocking the air and releasing it, and p, b and t release a small jet that hits the diaphragm as a thump rather than as speech. It is the commonest technical fault in a recorded poem and the easiest to fix, because it is a matter of geometry: the jet travels forwards from the lips, so a grille placed below and to one side of that line never receives it.
Foam windshields help a little, a proper pop shield on a stand helps a lot, and angle helps most and costs nothing. Poems built on repetition are worth checking specifically: anaphora, the device that opens successive lines with the same phrase, works because the ear recognises the returning phrase, and it collapses if that phrase begins with a popped consonant six times in a row. That is one of the few places where a writing decision made on paper meets a piece of stage technology.
Feedback, and what to do when it starts
Feedback is a loop, not a fault in the microphone: sound leaves a loudspeaker, re-enters the microphone, is amplified, leaves the loudspeaker louder, and the circuit runs away at whichever frequency the room favours, which is why it always arrives as one particular howling note. Four moves stop it, and every one of them can be made without stopping the poem.
- Step out from directly in front of the loudspeakers, since a cardioid microphone rejects what is behind it and hears everything in front.
- Uncup the grille and hold the microphone by its body, which restores the directional pattern.
- Lower the microphone away from a monitor wedge pointed at the stage, rather than raising your voice against it.
- Signal the sound desk, palm down, which means less, and let them pull the gain instead of stopping the poem.
Whoever runs the room should ring out the system before the audience arrives, meaning raise the level until it just begins to howl and then set it below that point. Hosting the room covers the rest of the desk work, and the practical rule for a poetry night is simple: a system set for poetry is quieter than a system set for a band, because a voice needs clarity rather than power.
The stand, the cable and the sound check
The stand, the cable and the sound check are where evenings are actually won or lost. Set the stand so the grille sits at mouth height for whoever is on next, not at chin height, and tighten the clutch properly, because a boom arm that droops through a poem is always a loose clutch and never bad luck. Teach every performer the two seconds of stagecraft that follow: take the microphone out of the clip or adjust the height, do not bend down to the microphone.
At the sound check, each person says a full line of their own poem at performance volume, not the word test, because the desk is being set for the loudest thing that will happen. Anyone whose poem contains a shout should perform the shout in the check. Run the cable behind the stand and out of the walking line, and keep one spare microphone and one spare cable at the side, since the thing that fails at a school event is usually a cable rather than a microphone.
What a microphone does not do
A microphone does not make a poem clearer, it makes it louder, and confusing those two is the reason so much amplified poetry is harder to follow than the same poem said unamplified in a small room. Diction, pace and the pause still come entirely from the poet, exactly as they do in the workshop route set out in How to write a poem and in the prompt work of Starting from a prompt. Amplification raises everything equally, including a mumbled ending and a line taken at twice its intended speed.
Two related expectations are worth correcting. Microphone placement techniques written for recording, the sort that specify angles for drums or for a guitar cabinet, exist because those instruments radiate sound differently from different surfaces; one voice on a stage needs distance and angle and nothing more. And a microphone does nothing about how it feels to stand there, which is a separate matter dealt with in Nerves, and what to do with them. At a slam, where each poet has three minutes on a single centre stage microphone, the poets who read as confident are usually just the ones who set the height before starting.